NBN start a 'corporate train wreck': PM

The Turnbull government has taken a swipe at internet retailers and Labor in a bid to deflect consumer anger with the national broadband network.

It's also admitted the network is not commercially viable as retailers decline to purchase sufficient bandwidth while aggressively competing against each other for new customers who aren't prepared to pay more for faster broadband services.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull concedes the NBN rollout - due for completion in 2020 - has its issues and setting up NBN Co was a big mistake.

But under sustained questioning from opposition MPs in parliament on Monday, he blamed previous Labor governments for the "biggest corporate train wreck" undertaken by the commonwealth.

Turnbull spoke about the issue during a visit to CSR Viridian in the suburb of Hume in Canberra today. (AAP) ()

In six years, Labor's NBN connected 51,000 premises compared to the three million in the five years under the coalition, Mr Turnbull said.

NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow said because retailers were aggressively competing for market share, they have been unable to charge consumers what he believes they should pay for increased bandwidth.

As a result, some households and businesses are unable to access the high speeds they expect or were told to expect by retailers.

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Consumers were led to believe they could access broadband speeds of between 12-25 megabits a second for the same price they were paying for a pre-NBN service (5 megabits a second).

NBN Chief Executive Bill Morrow said the company may struggle to compete against new mobile networks. (AAP) ()

About 85 per cent of premises were signing up to speeds of 25 megabits or less, and market studies showed of those, three out four were "quite satisfied" with what they were paying and the service they're getting, Mr Morrow said.

What consumers were paying retailers and the money retailers were paying NBN Co was not enough to recover the $49 billion cost of rolling out the network.

Mr Turnbull admitted the NBN's return of three per cent was not enough for it to be deemed a government asset or make it a commercial return for the stock market.

The Invermay Bowls Club in Tasmania cost $86,533 to connect to the NBN. (Photo: Google Maps)
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On another front, Mr Morrow believes his company may struggle to compete with mobile networks.

Low-cost city connections were subsidising the more difficult-to-wire homes, but margins would be squeezed if city customers turn to ultra-fast mobile networks for their internet connections.

The NBN is trialling fibre-to-the-curb technology, which takes cable to telecom pits outside premises, which is closer than fibre-to-the-node as well as cheaper and less complex than fibre-to-the-premises.

NBN Co expects to serve an initial one million premises with FTTC and estimates the technology will cost about $2900 per premises to deliver compared to $4400 for FTTP.

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman's annual report released last week showed NBN complaints, including those about delayed connections, soared from 10,487 to 27,195.